Acreage clearing, forestry mulching, new septic installs and complete site work for landowners and builders in Benton, Delano, Ocoee and Parksville, and on rural land along US-411 and the Hiwassee River.
Our crews drive the SR-60 and US-64 route into Polk County, and Benton sits about 31 miles from our Birchwood shop. That keeps our land clearing services in Polk County close enough to show up on schedule, come back for the final grade and pick up the phone when something on your site changes.
Josiah Sims learned dirt work at 9, running the Cat 977L his father rented to clear land for the family's new house and taking over the finish grading within days. Since then he has led crews, welded and fabricated transit buses, built additions and poured concrete. He still runs site work in person and holds every job to consistent service, real timeliness and a finish within budget.
Farm flats near Delano, rocky slopes below Chilhowee Mountain, river bottoms along the Hiwassee and the Ocoee. We walk the property before we price it, so your estimate reflects the ground that's really there and the state permits rural work in this county can trigger.
Clearing and forestry mulching run on their own crew and equipment, and new septic installs have a separate operator with his own machine, so your project doesn't wait in line behind another one. We'll walk your land and give you a free estimate, and financing is available through our quoting platform.
Every service we offer is available throughout Polk County, from the farm ground around Delano and Benton down to Ocoee and out along the Ocoee Scenic Byway toward Parksville. Call once and you get a single crew that can clear the land, prep the site and finish it, whether that's one wooded homesite or a whole family farm gone back to brush.
Much of the valley land in Polk County was farmed for generations and then left alone, and old fields and fence rows fill in quickly with cedar, sweetgum and blackberry briars. We clear homesites, take back grown-up pasture in the flats around Delano and along SR-163, and open wooded tracts off US-411 between Benton and Ocoee. Brush and small timber get mulched in place or hauled off, so your surveyor, soil scientist or builder walks onto clean, workable ground.
Forestry mulching grinds brush and small trees right where they stand, so there's nothing to burn and nothing to haul. That pays off twice in Polk County: brush piles need a state burn permit from October 15 to May 15, and the mulch mat left behind protects sloped ground draining toward the Hiwassee and the Ocoee. Selective thinning suits wooded lots in the hills east of Benton below Chilhowee Mountain, opening room for a cabin or a homesite while saving the hardwoods worth keeping.
Public sewer in Polk County is limited to the town utility systems, so most new houses on rural land need a septic system of their own. Polk is not a TDEC contract county, which means the construction permit comes straight from the state through the TDEC Chattanooga Environmental Field Office, based on a site sketch and the soils on your lot. Valley clay, rocky slopes and wet bottomland near the Hiwassee River all affect where a drain field can go. Our septic work centers on new septic system installation and full system replacements, from homes off Spring Creek Road near Delano to commercial buildings on US-411, with every install built to the approved permit layout.
We take a site from raw ground to final grade: clearing, rough grade, concrete footings and slab, backfill, retaining walls and a finish grade that turns water away from the house. Country homesites off SR-30 and Parksville Road usually mean a long gravel drive cut in from the road and a pad benched into a hillside, and lots on the slopes east of US-411 can need retaining walls before the grade works. When a project disturbs an acre or more, we plan the grading and stabilization around TDEC construction stormwater coverage.
On rural Polk County tracts the house tends to sit well back from the road, so water lines and electrical conduit have a long way to travel. We trench, lay and backfill those lines from the meter or road edge to the foundation on acreage around Delano, Benton and Ocoee. Trench routes get planned alongside the driveway, the grading and the septic layout, so no line crosses the drain field and no ground gets dug twice.
Family land in Polk County often comes with something that has to go first: a tired farmhouse, a leaning hay barn, a cluster of old sheds or a slab nobody wants. We bring the structure down, break out and haul the concrete, clear the debris and grade the spot so the next build starts clean, whether it's a farm off SR-163 near Delano or an older place on US-411 south of Benton. Demo is often step one before we clear and prep the rest of the property.
Whether your land is a homesite off US-411 near Benton, an old pasture outside Delano or a wooded hillside up toward Parksville Lake, we'll make the drive and walk it with you. Estimates are free anywhere in our Polk County service area. Tell us a little about the property, and a single crew will take it from the first cut to a finished final grade.
Polk County is mountain country first. About 80 percent of the county sits inside the Cherokee National Forest, climbing east through the Unicoi Mountains to Big Frog Mountain, the high point at 4,224 feet. Most people live along the western edge, a strip of Ridge-and-Valley farm ground with US-411 running straight up the middle of it. Two whitewater rivers cut through that strip: the Hiwassee River leaves the mountains near Delano, and the Ocoee River comes out of its gorge below Parksville Lake and meets the Hiwassee just northwest of Benton.
Nearly all of the county's building happens in that valley strip, and it keeps coming. Polk County's population grew about 10.8 percent from 2015 to 2025, and Census figures show more than 200 new homes authorized each year from 2022 through 2024. Most go up on rural tracts off US-411, SR-30 and Parksville Road, where old pasture, cedar and second-growth hardwoods have to come off before a pad, a driveway and a drain field can go in. Our land clearing services in Polk County, TN are set up for exactly that kind of country ground.
Boundless Excavation & Contracting is based in Birchwood, in northeast Hamilton County. Our trucks reach Polk County on SR-60 through Georgetown into Cleveland, then US-64 east along Waterlevel Highway to Ocoee, where US-411 turns north toward Benton and Delano. Benton is about 31 miles from the shop, or roughly 50 minutes. We built this business clearing, grading and prepping lots across Hamilton County and the Chattanooga area, and the run southeast into Polk County is the same kind of work on bigger, more rural tracts.
Polk County packs two kinds of country into one county line. The western sixth is Ridge-and-Valley ground: farm flats, clay slopes and river bottoms along the Hiwassee River, which leaves the mountains near the US-411 bridge. Everything east of that climbs fast into the Blue Ridge and the Cherokee National Forest, over Chilhowee Mountain and the Unicoi Mountains toward Big Frog Mountain. One tract outside Benton can hold a dry knoll, a rocky hillside and a wet bottom near the Ocoee River, and each of those needs its own plan for the house pad and the drain field.
We know the roads in and out. From Birchwood it's SR-60 into Cleveland and US-64 on Waterlevel Highway to the US-411 junction at Ocoee. From there US-411 runs north past the Nancy Ward Gravesite, through Benton and across the Hiwassee to Delano, where SR-163 heads west toward Calhoun. Parksville Road (SR-314) climbs from Benton to Parksville and the Ocoee Scenic Byway, and SR-30 follows the Hiwassee upriver to Reliance before dropping through the Greasy Creek valley to US-64. Gravel routes like Forest Road 77 get rough after storms, so we confirm access and gate details before the trailer rolls.
Most of the work here is rural residential: new homes on a few acres outside Benton, pasture reclaimed on family farms around Delano, shop and barndominium pads, and wooded cabin sites near Parksville Lake and the Chilhowee Recreation Area. Along the Hiwassee near Hiwassee Scenic River State Park and the Gee Creek area, it's river-bottom ground that takes careful drainage planning. With about 150 new homes authorized in 2025 after three straight years above 200, the demand is spread across the whole western side of the county.
The rules out here come from the state and from the water. New septic systems are permitted through the TDEC Chattanooga Environmental Field Office, since Polk is not a contract county. Disturbing an acre or more needs TDEC construction stormwater coverage, and work in or across a creek can call for an Aquatic Resource Alteration Permit. The Hiwassee above the US-411 bridge is a designated Tennessee Scenic River, and so is the Conasauga River in the southwest, so we work hard to keep sediment out of both. Shoreline work on a TVA reservoir like Parksville Lake can require a TVA Section 26a permit, and burning brush between October 15 and May 15 takes a state burn permit, one more reason we mulch.
Josiah or a member of the team walks your property in person, discusses your goals, and provides a free, no-obligation estimate — with financing available through our quoting platform if you need it.
We map out the scope of work — clearing boundaries, grading plan, septic or utility placement — and handle any permitting needs before equipment ever moves.
A dedicated crew and the right equipment for the job — mulchers, excavators, grading equipment — are dispatched to your property.
Our specialized crews get to work — clearing and mulching, installing your new septic system, or handling grading, retaining walls, and concrete as part of full site work.
We clear out debris, restore the site, and walk the finished property with you to make sure everything meets your expectations before we call the job done.
Our land clearing services reach across western Polk County, from Delano and the Hiwassee River down through Benton and Ocoee to Old Fort and the Conasauga area near the state line. We also cover the neighboring Tennessee communities in Bradley and McMinn counties along the way, all within reach of our Birchwood base.
The land sets the price. Acreage, how thick the brush and timber are, slope, rock, distance from the road and whether the debris is mulched or hauled off all move the number. A brushy hayfield on flat ground near Delano prices very differently from a steep wooded lot above Parksville Lake. We come out, walk your property with you and put together a free, itemized estimate instead of guessing over the phone.
Forestry mulching is a single machine with a heavy mulching head that chews brush, cedar and small trees into mulch and leaves it spread over the ground where it grew. Nothing gets burned or hauled, and the mulch layer helps keep soil in place on slopes that drain toward the Hiwassee or the Ocoee. It also skips the state's October 15 to May 15 burn permit season for brush piles. Cost depends on acreage, how dense the growth is and how steep the ground runs, so we price it after a free visit to your land.
We do, and new septic system installation is one of our core services. Polk County isn't a contract county, so the permit is issued by the state through the TDEC Chattanooga Environmental Field Office. The application includes a site sketch of the lot, plus soil maps from a soil scientist when the state requires them. After the state approves the layout, we dig the site, set the tank, install the drain field and grade the ground back over it.
It depends on how much ground you disturb and how close you are to the water. Clearing an acre or more needs TDEC construction stormwater coverage before work starts, and crossing or working in a creek can need an Aquatic Resource Alteration Permit. Shoreline work on a TVA reservoir like Parksville Lake can require a TVA Section 26a permit, and the Hiwassee above the US-411 bridge is a designated scenic river. Plenty of smaller inland jobs need none of these, and we'll go over what your property needs during the free estimate.
Yes. We cover the western side of Polk County, including Benton, Delano, Ocoee, Parksville, Reliance and the rural land in between, plus Old Fort to the south. Ocoee and Benton are under an hour from our Birchwood shop by way of Cleveland, and Delano is about an hour. We don't currently market the Copper Basin towns in the far east of the county, but ask if your property is out that way.
Usually, yes. Sloped, wooded lots in the hills east of US-411 are common in Polk County, and we handle them with cut-and-fill grading, retaining walls where the grade calls for them and erosion control from the first day. Mulching is often the best way to clear a hillside, because the layer it leaves behind holds the soil while the site comes together. We also check the access road ahead of time, since gravel roads near the Cherokee National Forest can be tight for a trailer.
Late fall through winter is a good window. Once the leaves drop, we can read the lay of the land, and a site cleared over the winter is ready for a spring build. Those same months fall in the state's burn permit season, which makes forestry mulching the simpler choice over brush piles. Valley clay and river bottoms near the Hiwassee soften after heavy rain, so we save grading for drier stretches, and off-season bookings usually get an earlier start date.
